February 21, 2024 - 1:00pm
The popular German columnist Jan Fleischhauer wrote seven years ago that the future of the country’s conservative party under Ursula von der Leyen would be “cold, calculating, and unlikeable”. The Christian Democratic Union dodged that bullet, but the European Union was not so lucky. For five years von der Leyen has occupied the highest office in the EU as President of the European Commission, and is now preparing her bid for a second term.
During her tenure, the EU has faced a number of crises, ranging from the Covid pandemic to the war in Ukraine and the declining relevance of Europe as a geopolitical power. Did von der Leyen steer the EU through these troubled times with a steady hand? It depends on who you ask: some claim she was a transformative president, whose only “real rival is herself”. Others will point towards the still-unresolved secrecy behind the Union’s Covid vaccine contract with Pfizer, a process that has turned out to be so opaque as to raise suspicion about attempts to conceal financial mismanagement or even full corruption.
There is also a lot of talk about her “green legacy” and the importance of the so-called “Green Deal” that was supposed to transform the EU into an environmental and economic powerhouse. A closer look, however, reveals that this legacy consists primarily of announcements, platitudes and missed targets. The EU will miss its climate targets by a significant margin, while the eurozone is dithering on the brink of a recession. It is of course possible that the latter of these two outcomes was the goal all along, given the fact that von der Leyen spoke at a degrowth conference in the European Parliament last year.
It is not without irony that barely a year after discussing how to replace GDP growth with “the sound of birdsongs”, von der Leyen now wants to make Europe more “competitive”. She did not mention how much of her €33,400 monthly salary will be replaced by birdsong in this new competitive Europe, but European voters should not hold their collective breath. In fact, despite having been a member of the conservative CDU for most of her political career, her governance was always more centre-left than centre-right — as demonstrated by her fondness for the degrowth movement and the green transition.
Whether these inclinations can deliver the necessary solutions to Europe’s biggest problems remains to be seen: the main challenge the continent is facing is the ongoing process of deindustrialisation, something that is a direct consequence of the EU’s main area of activity — regulation. In a plea to the European Commission, industry leaders are now calling for “lower energy costs and less red tape”, as a result of von der Leyen’s hostility towards fossil fuels and other carbon accounting schemes such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). In the words of Wolfgang Entrup, chief of the German chemical industry association VCI, “the bureaucratic madness caused by CBAM is unbelievable.”
The aforementioned Fleischhauer marvelled at the question as to why someone who is a member of a conservative party (like von der Leyen) can continuously speak and act like a member of the Greens. This certainly helped in 2019, when she was confirmed as president of the European Commission by the votes of the conservative EPP, the left-of-centre Socialists and the centrist Renew group in the European Parliament. This time, the expected Right-wing surge could make the addition of the Greens necessary, but given her track record that should not be a problem.
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SubscribeUtterly devoid of any substance. Surely even if you’re inclined to agree with the innuendo and implications you can recognise that this is just fluff?
Why do so few marvel at the question as to why so many who claim to be “conservative” want to burn, mine, frack or industrialise everything they possibly can?
Is growth conservative? Conservative growth is an oxymoron.
Building windmills and solar panels is radical, mostly because it doesn’t work. Using proven technology like fossil fuels or nuclear is conservative.
Works alright for Norway.
Just goes to show what we see time and time again that “conservatism” for so many modern conservatives is just “cherry picked things from recent history that favour my specific circumstances”. Just like the VCI guy in the article!
Norway gets 88.2% of its power from hydro and 10% from solar. It has so much hydro that it exports it.
“Works alright for Norway”. LOL. Norway has three times the land area of England, with massive hydroelectric resources, and a population less than one tenth the size. And as it happens extracting fossil fuels has worked alright for Norway too.
It’s basically all they do.
That and Fish.
You have a point, but nobody is more guilty of cherry picking facts and science than the climate alarmists. They believe in climate science like its gospel truth but the psychology of human political behavior, the economics of the modern industrialized world, the logistics of resource extraction for ‘green’ infrastructure, and the physics of power generation and consumption are just ignored or waived off like so much irrelevant nonsense. I want serious solutions as to how we get from where we are now to eliminating fossil fuels without having to resort to a totalitarian managed economy and then explain to me how any of it will be enforced globally given current geopolitical realities. I believe in climate science but climate science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in a complex world with many other constraints on policy and humanity that won’t go away because burning fossil fuels raises the average global temperature.
Good points, Steve. The radical climate activists simply ignore the complexity of the situation, and the need to manage reduction of fossil fuel use sensibly, while being ever-watchful for the unintended consequences of seemingly virtuous actions.
Veenbaas for the win. Its good!
It doesn’t really matter if individual ”right-thinking” countries decide to hamstring themselves on energy policy, while China and India continue to industrialise and contribute the largest carbon output in the world.
It wouldn’t make much difference if the UK somehow became unilaterally ”Net Zero” tomorrow.
A rational response to the effects of fossil fuels recognizes this, and also puts greater emphasis on nuclear as an alternative power source.
I don’t know whether ”conservative” is a useful term, but a lot of current supporters of ”Net Zero” policies (including Tories) are certainly irrational ideologues.
What would be different in a second term? Past performance is a reliable indicator of future results. If you’re happy with Ursula, you can keep Ursula. If not, not. It’s worth seeing if the climate cult will ever recognize that its goals do not match up with reality.
Your final sentence strikes me as logically equivalent to asking if Islamic jihadists will ever accept that most of the world doesn’t want to be governed by Shariya law. The answer is, in either case, no they obviously won’t. They will hold onto their goals in the face of any amount of opposition, any amount of criticism, and any amount of evidence as to the futility of said goals. The more reality fails to conform to their expectations, the angrier they’ll get and the more they’ll blame everyone other than themselves. That they were wrong and their goals were impossible to begin with is something the vast majority will willfully refuse to contemplate.
It is not about Ursula. The EU should be disbanded.
I hope she is re-appointed. A weaker EU trade block will help the U.K. develop its global trade relationships more quickly.
Or drag us down …
Anyone so benighted to be seriously thinking about re-appointing von der Leyen should look at her record as German defence minister. Her tenure there accomplished the destruction of the German army as a fighting force. To succeed in this herculean task, von der Leyen recruited a coterie of management consultants on exorbitant, no-bid contracts.
The lady has form. She is the Colonel Cargill of the German political class. For her defence ministry tenure, she earned the sobriquet “Flinten-Uschi” (Little Popgun Ursula).
If you want the root-and-branch destruction of the EU, re-appoint von der Leyen.
Not ‘wooden broomstick rifle Ursula’?
Let’s hope the talentless b*tch walks it in that case.
”She did not mention how much of her €33,400 monthly salary will be replaced by birdsong…”
Lol
But her continued leadership seems so appropriate for the EU, which has a proclivity for self-harm. This is a tradition which she carries on from German de facto leadership under Angela Merkel who made the unlateral decision to bring multi-cultural improvement to Europe in the form of 1.5 million undocumented “asylum-seekers” – including numerous jihadi cells, whom Europeans must now recognise as fellow Europeans, or risk being tagged as “extreme right wing racists.”
“A second Ursula von der Leyen term would hurt Europe”
My opinion on the matter is somewhere between good and couldn’t care less.
The EU is a cancerous abomination.
The best thing for her would be to be made minister of either the German Antarctic expedition for life.